


when i'm queen (and i'm your right hand)

by theseerasures



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Bodyswap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures
Summary: "It’s not that bad," she tells herself, stuffing a fistful of chocolate into her mouth, "I mean, itisthat bad, but it’s notthat thatbad. Elsa setting off an eternal winter, that was worse—”Post-Thaw: Anna and Elsa have a slight accident with a bodyswapping spell, and hijinks ensue.
Relationships: Anna & Elsa (Disney), Elsa & Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For ultranos, who asked for an almost diplomatic incident and got...well, crack.
> 
> Now with author's commentary in second chapter! Please view as Entire Work to get endnotes to work.

[1]Kristoff wakes up to the sound of his door slamming open. Anna flies through the threshold and in very quick succession almost kicks herself in the face, trips over a nonexistent hindrance, and falls onto the floor.

This isn’t really a surprising thing to view, but what _is_ surprising is that instead of bouncing up like nothing’s happened she just kind of…stays on the floor, making vaguely terrified noises.

He slowly pushes himself up. “Anna? Are you…okay?”

"I’m not."

"Not okay?" He jumps off his bed immediately. What if— "What’s going on? Did—"

"No, I’m—" slowly, she raises her head. Kristoff’s chest ices over when he sees the profound misery in her eyes, but then—

"I’m not _Anna_.”

Wait, what?

He stares dumbly as she sits up, running a hand through her hair. “We were looking over an old book—I touched something that I wasn’t supposed to, and…”

But Kristoff’s still fixating on the way that Anna—or whoever—is clasping her hands; Anna does it too, but not like this, but this way _does_ look weirdly familiar—

He’s suddenly and _painfully_ aware that he’s not wearing any pants.[2]

“ _Elsa?”_

* * *

Anna, meanwhile, is panicking very methodically inside a kitchen pantry.

"It’s not that bad," she tells herself, stuffing a fistful of chocolate into her mouth, "I mean, it _is_ that bad, but it’s not _that that_ bad. Elsa setting off an eternal winter, that was worse—”

(Of course, _she_ might set off an eternal winter right now, but that’s—okay, that’s not the point here,[3] the point is that there has to be at least one thing worse than _what is happening right now_.)

When Elsa and Kristoff finally find her, she’s standing listlessly in the middle of a small blizzard, still trying to think of something else that might be worse than her current predicament.

* * *

"Oh good," Kristoff mutters as Elsa drags him into the pantry Anna’s currently hiding in, "This isn’t going to start any rumors at all."

Elsa ignores him, too busy shivering at the sudden temperature change. Is this what people feel like all the time?

Her hand flicks up as if to dispel the winter scene in front of her. Then she remembers. “Anna!”

"I can’t _stop_ ,” her sister wails, flapping her hands around and only making the snow worse, “I keep trying—”

Elsa winces as she hears her own vocal chords warp toward hysteria, and hurries forward to give her sister a quick hug. At least her sense of balance in Anna’s body is getting a little better, but it feels weird, being the shorter one. “No, no—it’s okay. I thought I told you stay in the library while I went and got Kristoff—”

"I meant to," Anna mumbles into her shoulder, "But then I made a snow duckling, and then it ran away. See?"

Sure enough, there’s a pure white duckling sitting placidly a few feet away.

"It’s so cute," Kristoff says, before he can stop himself.[4]

"That doesn’t matter right now," Elsa says, ignoring him for a second time as he turns an alarming shade of puce, "Anna, I was supposed to sign a treaty with foreign emissaries fifteen minutes ago."

Her own eyes gaze back at her in horror before filling with tears. “What are we gonna do? I can’t go to that meeting as—as _you_ , I can’t be you _,_ I can’t even stop this snow—”

"It’s _okay_ ,” Elsa repeats, hugging her for the second time, “Getting upset only—”

She stops, shivers again. “We’ll figure it out together.”[5]

Anna sniffs, and then gives her a watery smile. “Maybe if I do this—”

Elsa has to duck to avoid her own fist as it suddenly jabs out; moments later, a snow kitten wanders out of brand new snow drift, mewling.

Kristoff stares around at the pantry in general, and then lets out a laugh that sounds almost maniacal. “Oh,” he says, slapping his hand to his forehead, “This isn’t happening.”

* * *

Anna does manage to finally stop the blizzard—by doing a weird thing with Elsa’s hands where she stretches out with her palm up and bends her middle and ring fingers[6]—but not before there’s practically a zoo in the pantry. After that it’s just a matter of sending her to the meeting as Elsa (against all of their better judgment) and then stealing back to the library with all the baby animals in tow, so they can figure out how to reverse what’s happened.

Or—Elsa’s doing that, Kristoff’s mostly watching the snow creatures, and.

From the desk, Elsa sighs. “No,” she says.

Kristoff ducks his head quickly, scratching the bear cub on his lap behind its ears. “I didn’t say anything.”

When he looks up again, Elsa is staring at him. “No,” she repeats.

It’s weird to see that kind of…weight in Anna’s eyes, but he makes himself meet Elsa’s gaze this time. “You haven’t even thought about it?”

"Of _course_ I’m thinking about it.” she snaps. The book she’s holding flies across the room, and she starts to pace. “Of _course_ I—I used to wake up in the mornings, and think that if I just—kept my eyes closed for long enough, my magic could just. Always, for years and years.”[7]

"Elsa," Kristoff says quietly, "I didn’t mean—"

But Elsa shakes her head. “She’s my sister. My magic—I don’t care. I would _never_. No.”

She sits down again, tries to run her hand through Anna’s hair. It doesn’t…work quite right, so she huffs and unties Anna’s pigtails. “Hand me that book.”

* * *

"—I was _so_ embarrassed, because it wasn’t just one snow bunny, it was a whole bunch, and who’s going to take, y’know, _The Queen_ seriously if _rabbits_ randomly spring out of the ground during the middle of an agreement—”

"Anna," Elsa says.

"—but then the Princess of Corona—she’s great, her name’s Rapunzel and I asked her to eat with us tonight, by the way—she just kind of made this noise, like— _eeee_? Or like— _yay?_ Anyway, she started playing with them, and then everyone just kind of laughed? Even the really angry guys from Selfoss, and everyone ended up signing the treaty. Diplomatic crisis averted!”

"That’s _brilliant_ , Anna,” Elsa says, and—yep, that’s totally pride, Anna can read her own face. “But the spell’s ready.”

She blinks. “Spell? Oh, right.”

They make their way to the space Kristoff cleared out for them, but before Anna grabs—well, her own hand. “Elsa. Are you…?”

"Don’t." Elsa doesn’t look at her.[8]

But Anna wants to. She just—she doesn’t really _like_ the magic, because it’s kind of inconvenient and she’d need to figure out a way to stop creating snow animals before there’s an infestation, but. It’s not…

"It’s not _bad_ ,” she says, “Or—not for me.”

"Not yet," Elsa counters. Then she smiles, pushes a strand of hair out of her eyes. "Besides, what would Kristoff do if we _did_ , huh?”

And Anna laughs, despite herself, and lets Elsa lead her on.

Before they sit, though, Anna reaches for Elsa’s hand again, squeezes: _Are you sure?_

Her sister squeezes back. _It’s okay_.[9]

* * *

Elsa keeps her eyes closed for a while, even after she’s done everything the book’d told her to do. Lets the magic last, for a little while longer in her mind.[10]

Then she opens them. Everything’s gone back to normal, except for the snow animals.

She smiles.

"Boy, it’s weird to be back in my body again," Anna laughs, before leaning over to help Kristoff up—

And, in the split second before she realizes _that’s my face I’m still looking at my face_ —overbalances, and sends her own body flying.

Kristoff lets out a high-pitched groan as he slams into the nearest wall, and then promptly passes out.

Anna stares in horror at Kristoff’s massive hands. _Her_ massive hands, now.

"Um," Elsa says, "So it’s possible that…that didn’t go quite right."


	2. Endnotes

1Title taken from the outtake song "We Know Better." Boy, has that song aged in really cool and interesting ways, huh? Particularly the part I took this title from, now that it's ELSA who gets to travel throughout the land and tell people about Anna's magic. I remember pinning a lot of hopes and expectations on this title, because at the time I was toying with several ideas about a Frozen-sequel-that-never-was, and one of them was that Anna would eventually have to become queen. (So thanks universe! It's always nice when you take time out of your day to confirm that I'm as always absolutely right). Anyway: I'd intended the bodyswap scenario to be kind of a trial run, where Anna would have to reckon with her inferiority complex and have to manage Elsa's powers AND Elsa's job, while feeling woefully wrongfooted and inadequate...and pretty much none of that ended up in the fic itself, but more on that later.[return to text]

2I wasn't really known for being a comedic writer at the time (still amn't), and this opening section was in some sense designed to take advantage of the fact that people would go in expecting angst before very definitively laying my "THIS IS A COMEDY FIC" cards on the table with the rapid ramping down of stakes. The decision to make Kristoff the POV character stemmed naturally from there, since he's pretty much the audience surrogate for this fic, being not really connected to the central action and also, by virtue of living in this universe, perpetually expecting the worst. It's not like FROZEN is known for being a comedy movie, no matter what Google says.[return to text]

3In a lot of ways I wish I _had_ written more comedy back then, because the dense "jab to the side with a pool cue" terseness of my prose feels much more suited for it than the perpetual "I'm not touching youuuuuu" dance I had with angst. It's probably the reason my Anna POV stories DRASTICALLY outnumbered my Elsa POV stories back then. The Anna we had after the first movie WAS very much a person who played hide-and-seek with her own sadness--she'd be upset, try to avoid the upset feelings while clinging to them at the same time, because it was hers when so little else was, so the cumulative result is a lot of prancing around her sadness throwing flowers on it while not wanting to delve deeply into why she might be feeling sad in the first place. My writing style at this point was a very good fit for that--not so much Elsa's overt and unrelenting depression. Then again: this fandom was basically how I cut my teeth as a writer, so maybe my style actually grew out of Anna instead of the other way around. I suspect this is a chicken-or-egg thing.[return to text]

4There's a little bit of experimentation going on here. I tend not to leave my third-person limited comfort zone, but for this fic I opted for a more experimental narration that was still MOSTLY consistently focalized, but every so often you'd get a bit like this, where we're suddenly in Kristoff's head despite the section being Elsa's. I felt it was appropriate, given all the other zany bullshit I was asking the reader to buy into, and the moments of impersonality in the narration helped me strike the comedic tone, even if I ended up having to sacrifice WAY TOO MUCH in the way of introspection in the later sections.[return to text]

5Hope we all enjoyed that one single line of dialogue where Anna felt unprepared to the task of being Elsa! Because it'll never come up again--it's all Elsaville from here. Mind you, the Elsa things I ended up going with was good stuff; I think it makes perfect sense she would, less than a year out from the Thaw, be tempted to pantomime what SHE was taught when confronted with someone else having powers. It's subtle, but unlike a lot of my writings from this period it doesn't fall onto the other side of being completely muted: she sticks Anna into a room by herself as soon as the mishap occurs. She tells Anna not to get upset. Conceal, don't feel. But it matters that she has this little jolt of self-recognition here, and changes course, and ends up quoting some of Anna's wisdom back at Anna. It's yet another example of an idea that could have been a whole fic that I just threw into this undisciplined kitchen sink, but this one, at least, holds up and gets its mini-payoff.[return to text]

6God, I agonized over this little aside for HOURS trying to find the right balance between something too vague for readers to parse out and basically saying "get it? it's a Sam Raimi Spider-man joke, because sometimes people have trouble controlling their superpowers, and he has superpowers, and Anna has superpowers. do you get it? do you get my joke about Spider-man? do you get it? do you g" and I'm still...not very happy with it. Just feels kinda clunky and much more easily relayed in a visual medium.[return to text]

7Aaaaaand here's where it all kinda falls apart. The inspiration for this line (and the story as a whole) was a scene in Fullmetal Alchemist, when Alphonse finally meets his body at the gate. It's the one thing he wants more than anything in the world--what he's been working towards this whole time--and he decides to leave it behind so he can fight the fight. It's a GREAT thing to adapt for Frozen, except I have no idea why when it came down to it I was so utterly averse to Elsa just SAYING something to the point of "yeah, Anna suddenly getting my powers is kind of a dream and a nightmare for me at the same time." Why did all this have to be shrouded in a thick layer of ~implication? That this is all coming from KRISTOFF'S perspective is baffling, and unfair to both characters: Elsa doesn't get any opportunities to feel some PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED feelings, and Kristoff is relegated to being Elsa's camera-cum-unpaid-therapist.[return to text]

8Why NOT, Elsa? What's frustrating for me with this fic in particular is that it could have been such a good showcase for all of the characters--how in tune they are with each other's emotions and wants at this point, how they're finally brave enough to have these conversations in the face of life throwing them a curveball. Imagine the love and courage it takes for Anna to even consider letting this be the status quo for a little longer, so Elsa can have a taste of the life she never got to have. Imagine the love and courage it takes for Kristoff to get over his own self-consciousness to ask Elsa to at least talk it out. Imagine the love and courage it takes for Elsa to know all of this, to have something she's wished for all her life dangled in front of her, and then to gently refuse it, because this is her responsibility, and she knows that she has to make peace with her own life. This is the only kind of crack fic that I'm interested in writing: the kind where an absurd premise manages to tease out the best and worst of characters. And some of that is here, but there's too much left unsaid.[return to text]

9I actually remember the moment when I realized that this kind of writing-by-writing-around, dressing-up-the-unsayable-without-saying-it was untenable. It was a little more than a year later, when I was writing "but sweet kisses i've got to spare" with Leah. At two pivotal points in that story (Steve's first pitch to Angie about possibly becoming a trio together with Peggy, and Steve and Angie's morning post-Christmas conversation) I wrote the setup, got the scene halfway going...and then I just had Steve and Angie quip into each other's shoes before the interaction petered out. Leah had to write all of the emotional heavy lifting in the published versions of those scenes, because I literally couldn't. It felt embarrassing for them to verbalize any of it out loud, because it felt like proof that they DIDN'T like and know each other that well, if they still needed to say it. And that's a very nice dream that I probably share with half the characters in Frozen--the idea that if you really love each other you don't need to say it out loud--but it's nonsense. There's no outside-looking-in for the characters themselves. _They_ don't have narration telling them what things are significant or what the significance could mean. The grand declaration at an airport is a worn cliche, but to adequately payoff an emotional arc characters NEED to have real conversations with each other, or at least be able to consciously acknowledge what's going on in their head, and if they don't, they shouldn't be rewarded for work they didn't do.[return to text]

10This is not to say that there's NO place whatsoever for dense, punchy lines rife with meaning. This sentence is a good example, and I'm still pretty happy with it. I'd been careful just referring to Elsa's powers as "magic" this whole time, so you have, basically, the magic of the bodyswap spell and the magic of Elsa NOT having magic working in tandem here.[return to text]


End file.
